Busy Commercial Airports per Area in EU and US States

Dec 12, 2018

The chart above shows the number of airports that have at least 15,000 annual passengers for every 10,000 square miles (25,900 square kilometers) in EU and US states. In both the EU and the US, the smallest states have the most airports per square mile of land, no surprise there.

Findings

The difference between the state with the greatest number of busy airports per area, Malta, and the state with the least (which has busy airports), Alaska, is 81.64 per 10,000 square miles.

Malta has 259.70 times the number of busy airports per 10,000 square miles that Alaska does.

The difference between the EU state with the greatest number of busy airports per area, Malta, and the US state with the greatest number of busy airports per area, Rhode Island, is 62.54 per 10,000 square miles.

Malta has 4.22 times the number of busy airports per 10,000 square miles that Rhode Island does.

Delaware is the only state in both the EU and the US without a single busy airport.

The median number of busy airports per 10,000 square miles in the 28 EU states is 2.35 and the mean 5.69.

The median number of busy airports per 10,000 square miles in the 50 US states is 1.07 and the mean 1.75.

The median number of busy airports per 10,000 square miles in the 78 EU and US states is 1.29 and the mean 3.16.

Details

Malta's figure is so large because the state is so small. If states whose landmass is smaller than 10,000 square miles are excluded than the five states with the most airports per area are Greece, Hawaii, Denmark, Massachusetts, and the United Kingdom. Conversely, if states whose landmass is larger than 100,000 square miles are excluded than the five state with the least airports per area are (excluding Delaware which does not have any airports) Kansas, Nebraska, Latvia, Oregon, and South Dakota.

It is interesting to note that US states have many airports per person but it is EU states that have many airports per area. Of course this could be attributable to the fact that EU states have higher population density, whereas US states have much larger states.